


Emily's Leap of Faith

by FriendvilleFan



Category: American Girl Dolls - All Media Types, American Girls: Molly - Various Authors
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 00:13:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,865
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24814375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FriendvilleFan/pseuds/FriendvilleFan
Summary: Emily Bennett, Molly McIntire's best friend, got left behind when Molly time traveled to the future. With a tragic past and fears of everything, can Emily be brave enough to take the leap that will change her life forever?





	Emily's Leap of Faith

A Leap of Faith  
(Or how Emily Bennett ended up in the Playroom)  
Jefferson, Illinois 1947  
Emily Bennett sighed as she closed the empty mailbox with a resounding clang. She looked left and she looked right down the road trying to see if the mailman was in sight but she saw nothing except flatland as far as the eye could see and maybe a cow or two here and there. This land was unnaturally flat and treeless and once again she longed for her beloved England. Empty mailbox and no mailman meant that there would be no letters from her friend Molly today. This deeply disappointed Emily. Ever since she arrived in America during the war, Molly McIntire was her only friend. Now Molly was off in Boston. Doing what exactly? Nobody knew for sure. In the letters Molly wrote to Emily she spoke of a magical time traveling adopted family in the future. Molly was known as a dreamer and a schemer to all her friends and here on the home front so it wasn’t out of the realm of possibility for Molly to be making the whole thing up. Emily truly didn’t believe her friend’s talk of magic and time travel, but Molly was still her only friend and the letters were funny and amusing.   
“Emily?” croaked an old woman’s voice.  
“Coming Aunt Primrose,” Emily called. With another lonely, mournful sigh Emily neatly leapt up the front porch steps and hurried to get her ailing aunt’s afternoon tea tray ready. Aunt Primrose was an ancient woman and not even technically Emily’s aunt. She was her great aunt and the only living relative she had left. The war may have been over, but Emily could never go back to England. It would be too painful and she was just a child who didn’t have the funds or the means to get herself there or a family to go to once she got there. Her dad had been a city bus driver. When Bennett’s house blew up in the Blitz, dad was busy at work while Emily was at school. It meant Mum and her dog were home when the Nazi bomb hit the house. She came home from school to find their walkway and perfectly manicured flower garden leading to a pile of smoking rubble. She heard the whimpering of her dying dog before she saw the mangled pieces of Mum. Dad went off to war that night. And she was sent to her grandparent’s castle in the countryside. She loved her grandparents and enjoyed gardening and taking care of the castle with grandpa. But they decided to send her to America where she would safer. She didn’t even know they had any obscure relatives in America, but grandpa’s sister Aunt Primrose emigrated during World War I because she fell in love with an American soldier. Emily begged her grandparents not to send her away, but with the dangers of the war lurking above in every passing plane they felt they had no choice.   
On the ship over to the U.S. Emily got a telegram saying that her grandparent’s castle had been bombed because the Nazis thought that they were hiding royals. It wasn’t true and now her grandparents were blown to pieces too. Emily had no stomach for gardens after that. So no, going back to England was impossible no matter how much she wanted it. And that was why Emily had no friends besides Molly. Even though the war had been over for two years now, these silly American girls would simply never understand what she had been through. Molly didn’t quite get it sometimes either if she could afford to dream of princesses and magical time traveling families.   
“Emily?” the voice croaked from the upstairs bedroom.  
“I’m coming, Aunt Primrose.” As waited for the tea kettle to whistle, she cut the crust off of Aunt Primrose’s liver paste sandwiches and arranged them nicely on the plate. When Emily first arrived in America, she couldn’t stay with Aunt Primrose right away as Aunt Primrose was naturally ailing at that time. So, Emily stayed with the McIntires for a couple of months. Aunt Primrose recovered enough to take Emily, then she quickly had another bout of illness. Aunt Primrose was so old that she was ailing all the time. Nosy neighbor Mrs. McIntire tried to check in on them. Occasionally she would drop by with a casserole or some other strange American meal and ask how Aunt Primrose was faring. Although Emily didn’t have time to be a kid because she was constantly taking care of her elderly aunt, Emily assured Mrs. McIntire that all was well. Emily didn’t want to go live with the McIntire again.   
If Molly had been there then Emily would have jumped at the chance. But Molly wasn’t there anymore, she was in Boston dreaming of magic spells to lie about. Was Molly in an insane asylum? Is that why the McIntires refused to ever speak of where she went or why? Emily was doing just fine on her own with sick and dying Aunt Primrose. Her biggest fear was what would happen when Aunt Primrose finally died. What would the American Government do with her? Foster care? Send her back to England and throw her to the mercy of a London Orphanage? Emily shuddered at the horror of it.   
Her dog Yank, another memory of Molly, barked to go outside. Emily sighed in aggravation and paused to let him out. Suddenly there was a whoosh of an oncoming train. There was no train station nearby. It seemed perfectly sunny for the moment but fear gripped Emily’s heart. These crazy American tornadoes seemed to come out of nowhere. “Yank!” Emily screamed.  
Yank had already bounded out into the yard. He sniffed the air. He looked back at Emily, and then turned to scamper off to do his business. There was not a cloud in the clear blue sky, but the sound of an oncoming train kept getting louder and louder. A funnel cloud swept down from the sky, and Emily stood frozen gripping the edge of the front door in pure terror, but it wasn’t a tornado. It was actually a train! It descended down on the clouds as if it were a real track on the ground. The sides were painted with bright, flashy tie tied colors that read: TIME TRAVEL EXPRESS.   
Emily gasped. Maybe Molly wasn’t totally bonkers after all. The train whistled and people wearing the most fashionable clothes stepped off. The conductor called out, “One hour until our next stop: July 2010!”   
Before Emily could move, Aunt Primrose called out again, “Emily? Emily, please, I’m dying.”  
As much as she wanted to investigate the train, Emily did the right thing and ran up the stairs to her dying Aunt. Emily rushed to her side. Aunt Primrose coughed. “Emily, dear, I’m sorry.”  
Emily tried to be a brave Brit and smile, but she couldn’t. Tears for Aunt Primrose, tears for the loss of her entire family, tears for the war rolled down Emily’s cheeks. “Don’t be sorry.”  
Aunt Primrose was coughing up blood now, and Emily handed her Aunt her own handkerchief. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry I couldn’t be better for you.”  
“It’s not your fault,” Emily almost choked on the sobs.  
Aunt Primrose shook her head. “I’m sorry. But now I’m trying to make it right. I contacted someone who will make things right for you, someone who will take you to another time and place.”  
What? Emily tried to stifle a gasp of shock. Aunt Primrose called the time travel train here? Would it take her to Molly? How did Aunt Primrose even know? So many unanswered questions swirled around in her head.   
“Goodbye, Emily,” Aunt Primrose barely coughed out. And then she died.   
As Emily sobbed over the body of her dead great aunt, she did not hear the footsteps come into the room behind her. Someone cleared their throat and Emily jumped out of her skin. She turned to see a woman with bangs and glasses nothing like Molly’s. “Hello, my name is Jessica. And you must be Emily Bennett, right?”  
Emily blinked.   
The lady wore typical 1940s clothes, but she had a strange rectangle in her hand that was buzzing and lighting up. “Excuse me for just a second.” She held the rectangle up to her ear and said, “What do you want? No, I haven’t got the girl yet! Jack, stop interrupting me, I’ll be back on the next train with the girl. Okay, I see. Hey, that’s not my fault! You figure it out. See you soon, bye.” She slipped the rectangle into the bodice of her dress. “Well, are you coming with me or not?”  
Emily didn’t know what to do. She was paralyzed with fear and confused beyond belief.   
“Oh, sorry,” said the weird lady. “I didn’t mean to frighten you. Now, would you like to come with me and see Molly again?”  
“In Boston?” Emily managed to squeak out.  
The woman laughed. “Not quite, but yes.”  
“On that train I saw?”  
Jessica dropped her rectangle. “You saw that? Not many people do.”  
Emily nodded.  
“Well, I guess that’s a sign that this was meant to be. Would you like to go on a train ride with me to go see Molly in Boston?”   
Emily wasn’t sure what was waiting for her in this so called Boston, but she had no one here and she knew without a doubt that she wanted to see Molly again. “Yes.”  
“Sorry, what was that you said?”  
“Yes,” said Emily a little louder. “Yes, I’ll go with you.”  
Jessica smiled. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say.” She took Emily by the hand and together they stepped outside to where the train was waiting.   
“All aboard for 2010!” the conductor called out.   
Emily gulped down a wave of nausea and prayed she wasn’t in the midst of being kidnapped by Nazis pretending to be crazy time travelers. As soon as the train started moving, Jessica snapped her fingers and she was no longer wearing a 1940s dress but rather pink short shorts and a big oversized T-shirt while several stains and rips in it. She settled into her seat and closed her eyes. “Wake me when we get there.”  
Emily looked out the window and saw not scenery but squiggly glowing lines and giant flashing neon numbers that read in order, 1948, 1949, 1954, 1964, 1974, 1984, 1994, 2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, and finally the whirling train came to a stop at 2010. “Everybody off for 2010!” the conductor yelled out.  
Jessica smiled and took Emily by the hand. “You ready to see Molly?”  
Emily nodded.  
“And meet a whole new family?”   
Emily took a deep breath and said, “Well, I had no one back there so I might as well.”  
Jessica laughed. “You know, I think you might turn out to be good medicine for some of these clowns.”   
Emily wasn’t sure what that meant so she chose not to think too deeply on it as she boldly stepped into a new life in a whole new world.


End file.
